Bugged GeForce Drivers Improve Image Quality

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BattleForge Image Quality Comparison

BattleForge: BattleForge is a free-to-play EA online card game that's vaguely reminiscent of Magic: The Gathering but with better graphics and no need to carry around a shoebox of cards. The game supports DirectX 9, 10.1, and 11; our screenshots were taken with the game in DX11 mode and with the optional high quality texture pack installed. BattleForge has a built-in benchmark accessible from the "Graphics" subsection which makes it handy for performance comparisons as well.

8x Multisampling

4xSupersampling

The screenshot on the left uses traditional multisampling while the one on the right uses the bugged 4x supersampling mode. We've drawn a box around the best comparison area on the right-hand side of the screen. The paving stones in that area are distinctly sharper when using MSAA and shimmer slightly as the benchmark runs its course. The supersampled image is slightly blurrier, but eliminates the shimmering effect.

No AA

Multisampling

Supersampling

We grabbed a second set of screenshots and zoomed in to show you what's happening on a pixel level by zooming in 500 percent on a specific area. The image on the far left has no AA applied, the middle image uses multisampling, and the far right uses supersampling. Note how the textures in the supersampled image have been antialiased while the multisampled textures have not.

Battleforge isn't the only game we tested. We also observed fullscreen supersampling in Bad Company 2, DiRT 2, and Aliens vs Predator. These are all DirectX 11 titles—when we forced BattleForge into DX9 mode to measure the supersampling performance impact there, we discovered supersampling was no longer being misapplied by the Transparency AA settings in the NV Control Panel.